"I'm much too young to feel this damned old." Garth Brooks

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Co-working the 60 Blog

I have a friend who worked with a very toxic person and the atmosphere in her office was always negative. My friend’s coworker is now gone from that office, and I’m told that everyone is now happy and cooperative during the workday. How can a negative person bring you down, along with everyone else in your vicinity? How have you managed to keep your cool around someone who complains all the time and tries to sabotage you and your work?

I refer back to my Acquainting the 60 Blog post of earlier this week. Can you truly put in a good day’s work when you’re working alongside a good friend? Or are you coworkers from 9 to 5 and then friends on the weekends? Or does that make you acquaintances? Can you separate the two?

I’m torn. Many years ago, when I first moved to California, I didn’t have a car; I had to take several buses to get to work. Every once in a while, a coworker would generously offer to drive me to or from work. (I specifically remember a ride home in a DeLorean!) A couple of times, I was offered a ride by the office manager. We didn’t socialize at any other time, but it was all about the perception.

The office manager was asked by her boss to not drive me home any more because it was perceived we were friends and I might have been given special treatment in the workplace. That was far from the case, unless “special treatment” meant “let me help you save a few bucks on bus fare.”

My friend mentioned above told me of something that happened about two years ago in that office. The office manager at the time and this particular (now gone) coworker went to lunch almost every day. It really was nothing more than the two of them walking across the street to go shopping or buy a sandwich, but the perception was that they were sharing work secrets.

Maybe they were, and maybe that eventually led to both of them no longer working at the firm. It’s a hard choice to make.